Death of Nation's Oldest Death-Row Inmate Gets International Media Play

We wrote in a blog item the other day about the passing of 94-year-old Viva Leroy Nash, who was the oldest person on death row in the United States.

Nash had been housed on Arizona's death row in Florence since the early 1980s, after his conviction for murdering a young man named Greg West during the armed robbery of a Phoenix coin and stamp shop.

We took a special interest in Nash's case (and his death) because of stories we wrote about the vicious geezer.

Someone sent us

this link

to a BBC radio report that aired the other day on Mr. Nash and his demise.

It features an interview with Phoenix appellate attorney Tom Phelan, an excellent advocate who succeeded in thwarting any and all efforts by the State of Arizona to execute the ancient killer.

(Not that the state was trying too hard during Nash's final years -- it seemed as if that prosecutors, too, were none too keen about the spectre of wheeling the psychopathic old boy into the hands of his executioner).